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The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

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Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#41

Post by TulliusCicero »

coldtea wrote: post #14
ajross wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life on an island with a historically strict protectionist food policy. There is no potato shortage, per se (per the article, I'm surely no expert). There's a shortage of potatoes from Hokkaido, and domestic consumers aren't prepared for (or allowed to) buy them from an international market. Japan isn't the only nation to do this, of course. But they're one of the worst.

> Life on an island with a historically strict protectionist food policy. There is no potato shortage, per se (per the article, I'm surely no expert). There's a shortage of potatoes from Hokkaido, and domestic consumers aren't prepared for (or allowed to) buy them from an international market. Yeah, if only they gave up their autonomy and local agriculture to have more access to chips from abroad.

It's not just chips. Japan's generally protectionist/sheltering attitude towards businesses makes their whole economy structurally inefficient. Japan's nominal GDP per capita is like 40% lower than the US these days.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#42

Post by iopq »

coldtea wrote: post #14
ajross wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life on an island with a historically strict protectionist food policy. There is no potato shortage, per se (per the article, I'm surely no expert). There's a shortage of potatoes from Hokkaido, and domestic consumers aren't prepared for (or allowed to) buy them from an international market. Japan isn't the only nation to do this, of course. But they're one of the worst.

> Life on an island with a historically strict protectionist food policy. There is no potato shortage, per se (per the article, I'm surely no expert). There's a shortage of potatoes from Hokkaido, and domestic consumers aren't prepared for (or allowed to) buy them from an international market. Yeah, if only they gave up their autonomy and local agriculture to have more access to chips from abroad.

Why is local agriculture more important than local customers?

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#43

Post by Pitarou »

emodendroket wrote: post #12
seunosewa wrote: post #5

I was thinking, "this is ridiculous; why can't they just import more potatoes?" and then I found this: "She also cited regulatory hurdles, which limit the amount of imported potatoes that can be used in products, as partly responsible for the shortage." No, it is primarily responsible for the shortage.

If, as your post seems to be recommending, such regulations were abolished, Japanese farmers would pretty much cease to exist because of their inability to compete with cheaper imports. Maybe you consider that an unacceptable tradeoff for some potato chip shortages but it's not clear that the Japanese share your sense of priorities.

It‘s not as simple as that.

Japan‘s agricultural system was intended to be a temporary prop, to help agriculture recover after the War. The people would experience inflated prices and erratic supplies, but that was thought a price worth paying.

The system has been kept in place for decades longer than its stated purpose required. The forces that keep it in place are powerful, and democratic only in the loosest sense of the word.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#44

Post by zaphoyd »

iopq wrote: post #39
emodendroket wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If, as your post seems to be recommending, such regulations were abolished, Japanese farmers would pretty much cease to exist because of their inability to compete with cheaper imports. Maybe you consider that an unacceptable tradeoff for some potato chip shortages but it's not clear that the Japanese share your sense of priorities.

> If, as your post seems to be recommending, such regulations were abolished, Japanese farmers would pretty much cease to exist because of their inability to compete with cheaper imports. Good, they can do something more useful with their time because Japan does not have a comparative advantage in farming. Having farms in Japan is very inefficient, since there are better regions to grow these crops. Sure, you can't d…

I would assume because maintaining some level of domestic food production would be important for national security.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#45

Post by brownbat »

emodendroket wrote: post #12
seunosewa wrote: post #5

I was thinking, "this is ridiculous; why can't they just import more potatoes?" and then I found this: "She also cited regulatory hurdles, which limit the amount of imported potatoes that can be used in products, as partly responsible for the shortage." No, it is primarily responsible for the shortage.

If, as your post seems to be recommending, such regulations were abolished, Japanese farmers would pretty much cease to exist because of their inability to compete with cheaper imports. Maybe you consider that an unacceptable tradeoff for some potato chip shortages but it's not clear that the Japanese share your sense of priorities.

I don't think GP was making a political statement, just commenting on the buried lead, but I'll play devil's advocate.

I want farmers to have jobs too. I'd still find it sad if that were the rationale here, though, because while protectionist measures can save jobs, they remain one of the worst tools to do so, typically costing several hundred thousand dollars per job.

Tire manufacturing jobs saved at $900,000 per job: https://piie.com/publications/policy-briefs/us-tire-tariffs-...

Textile jobs saved at a cost of $4 million per job: http://www.heritage.org/report/the-textile-and-apparel-trade...

Sugar quotas costing $800,000 per job: http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/41418/

Those are all US examples. Maybe the Japanese are better at saving jobs through protectionism and get a better return on their restrictions, but those are 10-100 times the salaries in those fields. It seems unlikely they are closing that gap.

Sadly there's just no free lunch. It's like the second law of thermodynamics for economies.

When you shut down economic activity to improve health and welfare, that's fine, you can accomplish a lot that's useful for society.

But when you try to shut down economic activity to create wealth, you generally pay far more than you were trying to save.*

* With the possible exception of infant industry protection, but that's controversial, and hardly an exact science. Either way, potato farming is hardly some new technology where Japan is likely to corner the global market once they build up a little more volume.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#46

Post by Pitarou »

justinjlynn wrote: post #9
seunosewa wrote: post #5

I was thinking, "this is ridiculous; why can't they just import more potatoes?" and then I found this: "She also cited regulatory hurdles, which limit the amount of imported potatoes that can be used in products, as partly responsible for the shortage." No, it is primarily responsible for the shortage.

Regulatory hurdles in the import/export market are like a person trapped in a sphere at sea. Even when you run out of drinking water inside the sphere, you still don't want the sphere to let in saltwater. It's all water but you shouldn't drink it. Your position makes sense where the sphere is floating in clean fresh drinking water. However, like an ocean is much larger than a lake, there is much more toxic crap on th…

Why do you assume that the primary purpose of the regulatory regime is to maintain high standards?

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#47

Post by Pitarou »

emodendroket wrote: post #29
roenxi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you regulate against selling potato chips at the market rate, a likely outcome is a shortage of potato chips. Grandparent didn't suggest a problem with protectionist regulations - simply that the regulation is the probable cause of the shortage. There is a link.

Actually what he said is that regulation is "primarily responsible" for the shortage, which seems contentious -- what about the failed crops, after all -- but it seems to me that he probably had some motivation for saying that beyond pedantry.

Is this more to your liking then:

Japan is peculiarly vulnerable to potato shortages because it restricts imports, even when its own potato crop fails.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#48

Post by mc32 »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #10
yladiz wrote: post #3

It's an interesting experience seeing some shelves in 7-11 here in Tokyo partly empty due to this shortage -- outside of perishable goods like onigiri, it's pretty uncommon to see something like potato chips missing on a shelf. I wonder how long it'll take for the shortage to end, and if they'll be able to mitigate it by importing. One thing it doesn't mention in this article is that companies are pretty strict about…

Are US potatoes really lower quality than Japanese ones?

Likely it's just something similar to the argument that Japanese snow is unique so they don't need French skis[1, 2] when they attempted to frustrate the importation of Rossignol skis into Japan. Or they could not digest beef in the same quantities as other peoples when they wanted to thwart importation of US beef into Japan.

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/1988/03/06/weekinreview/the-world-jap...

[2]https://books.google.com/books?id=lfAu0Tl0018C&pg=PA105&lpg=...

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#49

Post by ajross »

coldtea wrote: post #14
ajross wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life on an island with a historically strict protectionist food policy. There is no potato shortage, per se (per the article, I'm surely no expert). There's a shortage of potatoes from Hokkaido, and domestic consumers aren't prepared for (or allowed to) buy them from an international market. Japan isn't the only nation to do this, of course. But they're one of the worst.

> Life on an island with a historically strict protectionist food policy. There is no potato shortage, per se (per the article, I'm surely no expert). There's a shortage of potatoes from Hokkaido, and domestic consumers aren't prepared for (or allowed to) buy them from an international market. Yeah, if only they gave up their autonomy and local agriculture to have more access to chips from abroad.

Surely there is a middle ground between "stupid chip shortage" and "loss of local agriculture" though. Japan can grow potatoes and trade them too.

Like I said, everyone does this to some extent. But Japan is among the worst

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#50

Post by iopq »

zaphoyd wrote: post #44
iopq wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If, as your post seems to be recommending, such regulations were abolished, Japanese farmers would pretty much cease to exist because of their inability to compete with cheaper imports. Good, they can do something more useful with their time because Japan does not have a comparative advantage in farming. Having farms in Japan is very inefficient, since there are better regions to grow these crops. Sure, you can't d…

I would assume because maintaining some level of domestic food production would be important for national security.

I would assume maintaining healthy trade relationships is important for food shortages like these, as well.
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